In his role as producer, Don Was has often had to play the diplomat, especially when he found himself caught in the crossfire of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. But they weren’t the only stars he had to mediate between.

In 1990, while behind the desk for Bob Dylan’s Under the Red Sky, he found himself at the center of disagreement over a guitar solo between the folk rock legend and one of his guest collaborators, George Harrison.

“I learned a lesson pretty early on,” Was says in conversation with Rock & Roll High School . What was the lesson? Well, as he puts it, it was “benign honesty.”

“George Harrison came in to overdub guitar in the song,” he explains. “I'd never met George Harrison before. The room was aglow with personality and charisma.

“And Bob, I guess, on a previous record, had only let George play an overdub one time, and then he cut him off. So, as we’re walking into the control room, George Harrison said to me, ‘Don't let him do that again. Give me a chance to play it a few times,’ which Bob overheard.”

Was plays the comment as being “jocular” and fun, rather than it coming from a place of malice. Then, without much warning, the engineer hit record. Without even hearing the song before, or having even tuned up, Harrison cut a take.

“All things considered, George played a respectable solo; he was digging his way out of not knowing what key it was in,” Was recalls.

“We get to the end, and Bob says, ‘Okay, that's great. Thank you,' [clearly eager to move on]. George Harrison turns to me, and he says, ‘Wait a minute, what do you think, Don?’ And Bob goes, ‘Yeah, what do you think, Don?’ Time slowed down.”

Source: yahoo.com/Phil Weller

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The Beatles ripped up the rulebook in many ways.

One of these was that, after their first album was rushed together to cash in on their first couple of hits, they decided not to put singles on albums, or to issue album tracks as singles. The reason for this was simple: they felt it was unfair on fans to have to buy the same song twice.

They didn’t stick to the rule religiously – for example, both their movie soundtrack albums (1964's A Hard Day’s Night and Help! from the following year) feature singles, as they were put out to promote the films.

But had they wanted to, they could easily have doubled their total of number one hit singles. Here, we break down which songs they could have used – it’s hard to imagine any of them not hitting the top spot.

The Beatles themselves only really controlled what was released in their native UK. Other territories could issue their songs however they chose, so for the purposes of this article, we only focus on what was (and wasn’t) a single in their home country.

1. Twist & Shout (1963) 

Most people would be forgiven for thinking that ‘Twist & Shout’ was a Beatles original, but they’d be wrong. This staple of their live show was actually a cover version of the 1962 Isley Brothers hit – itself a cover of a 1961 recording by a group called The Top Notes – produced by Phil Spector.

And although The Beatles’ UK and US record labels (Parlophone and Capitol respectively) never issued ‘Twist & Shout’ as a single, Chicago’s VeeJay label had picked up the rights to some of their 1963 recordings after Capitol had initially passed on the band. And so it did come out as a single in the US on a subsidiary of VeeJay, where it was one of five Beatles songs in the top five on the Billboard Hot 100 in April 1964.

Source: classical-music.com

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The collaborative spirit of the former Beatles shines through in the music they created together after the band's split.Los Angeles Today

After the Beatles broke up, John Lennon continued to write songs for his former bandmate Ringo Starr's solo albums. Lennon penned the opening track 'I'm the Greatest' on Ringo's 1973 album, as well as other songs like '(It's All Down to) Goodnight Vienna' and 'Cookin' (In the Kitchen of Love)' on later releases. These collaborations marked a reunion of sorts for the former Beatles members.
Why it matters

Ringo Starr's solo career allowed the former Beatles members to continue working together, even after the band's acrimonious split in 1970. Lennon's songwriting contributions to Ringo's albums show the enduring creative partnership between the two musicians, despite the tensions that had developed within the band.
The details

On Ringo's 1973 self-titled album, Lennon wrote the opening track 'I'm the Greatest,' which featured all three of Ringo's former bandmates - Lennon, George Harrison, and Paul McCartney. Lennon also wrote '(It's All Down to) Goodnight Vienna' for Ringo's 1974 album of the same name, and played piano on the track. For Ringo's 1976 album Ringo's Rotogravure, Lennon contributed the song 'Cookin' (In the Kitchen of Love),' which he also played piano on.

A founding member of the Beatles who went on to have a successful solo career after the band's breakup in 1970. He continued to collaborate with his former bandmate Ringo Starr on several of Ringo's solo albums in the 1970s.

Source: nationaltoday.com

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In the early Beatles days, John Lennon—like so many young twenty-somethings trying to find themselves—often used humor and wit to deflect attention from his true feelings. As a ruffian cutting his teeth in Liverpool, Lennon certainly learned how to don a necessary layer of armor over his soft interior. It wasn’t until the mid-1960s, with songs like “Help!” and “Strawberry Fields Forever”, that Lennon started leaning into his truth.

But there were few Beatles tracks quite as heartbreakingly sincere as the late-era single, “Don’t Let Me Down”. Although credited to the Lennon-McCartney songwriting partnership, both Lennon and Paul McCartney would later clarify that it was earnestly Lennon’s.

“It was a very tense period,” McCartney later explained to Barry Miles. “John was with Yoko [Ono] and had escalated to heroin and all the accompanying paranoias, and he was putting himself out on a limb. I think that, as much as it excited and amused him, at the same time, it secretly terrified him. ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ was a genuine plea.”
“Don’t Let Me Down” Gains Even More Power Within the Greater Context

To say 1969 was a tense period for The Beatles is an expectedly British understatement from Paul McCartney. The band was experiencing its first highly public, highly contentious breakup, complete with lengthy, arduous legal proceedings that distracted them from the one thing they wanted to do in the first place: make music. Professional obligations aside, these four men were also experiencing fundamental shifts in relationships they had had since they were in their late teens and early twenties.

For the John Lennon who wrote “Don’t Let Me Down”, it’s easy to see how he could feel as if he were stepping out onto a wobbly tree limb. He had already established a future with his second wife, who was also his creative collaborator.

Source: americansongwriter.com/Melanie Davis

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“The Beatles” and “heavy metal” are largely regarded as residing on opposite ends of the musical spectrum. But every so often on a rogue 1960s track, the Venn diagram between these two phenomena became nearly circular. Songs like “Helter Skelter” and “Why Don’t We Do It In The Road” come to mind, and certainly post-Beatles songs from John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s Plastic Ono Band could qualify.

What this writer wouldn’t expect is that the song Lennon once cited as the first heavy metal record would come from their 1965 album, Help! Smack dab in the middle of the decade, we were still years away from the heavy offerings of Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, and Deep Purple. Not even The Beatles were that far into their experimental, psychedelic phase by that point. But they were getting close.

And according to Lennon, “Ticket To Ride” was the band’s first foray into heavy (or, perhaps more accurately, relatively heavier) rock ‘n’ roll. The song boasts Lennon and Paul McCartney’s signature harmonies and a syncopated rhythm section with accompanying drone notes that foreshadowed their later works. But was it actually heavy metal?
According to John Lennon (And the Times), That Answer Would Be Yes

As genres evolve and intensify, it’s only natural that the “first” versions of that style become paler by comparison. Sure, “Ticket To Ride” by The Beatles doesn’t seem like heavy metal now. But as John Lennon put it in Anthology, the song was “slightly a new sound at the time. It was pretty f***ing heavy for then, if you go and look in the charts for what other music people were making. You hear it now, and it doesn’t sound too bad. It’s a heavy record, and the drums are heavy, too. That’s why I like it.”

Source: americansongwriter.com/Melanie Davis

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Entertainment legend, global philanthropist and friend of Maya Angelou, Oprah Winfrey has achieved every dream she ever had — except for one.

In a Tuesday appearance on The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, Winfrey spoke about how she’s been fortunate to have every one of her wildest wishes come true. The only one that never came to fruition was ending up with her teenage crush.

“Everything I ever wanted or dreamed came true,” Winfrey said. “Except, I did not marry Paul McCartney.“

The media mogul goes on to share that, growing up, she was the only girl she knew who loved The Beatles as much as she did. She even collected Beatles trading cards. And of course, like every fangirl she had a favorite member of the band.

“Of course Paul was my favorite Beatle. And I used to try to make him think of me,” Winfrey says, clutching her fists and remembering. “I used to wake in the morning and I’d stand on the stairs and say, ‘Think of me, think of me, think of me.'”

Unlike most other fangirls, however, Winfrey actually got to know her childhood crush one day. She shares that, years later, when she got the chance to interview the rock legend, she took the opportunity to ask him the question that’s been burning in the back of her mind since childhood.

“My first question to him was, ‘All those years, I was 14, and I was thinking of you. Did you ever once think of me?'” she recounts. McCartney’s reply is one that every fan hopes to hear one day: “Every day, babe, every day.”

Though Winfrey never got the chance to marry her favorite Beatle, the two of them did participate in a very special ceremony together one day. In 2010, both entertainers were awarded with Kennedy Center Honors. One of Winfrey’s favorite memories of that big night occurred not when she received her honor, but when The Beatles’ Billboard Hot 100 No. 1 “Hey Jude” began playing.

“[McCartney] took my hand,” she said. “And that was the dream I had all those years!”

Source: billboard.com/Annie Harrigan

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